A day spent on the road with breaks for coffees and dog walks is not a great jumping off spot for a blog.
But the bricks on arrival brighten up life.
And the street art uses the same colours.
More tomorrow #quickie
Month: Dec 2020
Pandemic Pondering #268
A quiet day at The Box yesterday. Being in a gallery I’ve talked about a bit gives me the chance to talk about a very old ponder that took place in The Plymouth City Museum, the forbear of The Box more than 25 years ago.
https://www.theboxplymouth.com/
It happened in the galleries that are now called Port of Plymouth. 25 years ago I was a very regular visitor to the museum , particularly when the weather was not good and I had two small children to entertain. We always spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the case that held Plymouth Argyle artifacts and memorabilia, because my son was obsessed with football. On one visit a face and a name caught my eye from a 1920’s team photo. The name , Jack Pullen, and the face reminded me of someone I was at school with and briefly I wondered if they were related. In many respects this was highly unlikely as I went to school in Essex, The player in question though was a Welsh International player and my school friends name was Dai so it was not a completely unreasonable thought. In fairness I didn’t really dwell on it too much.
In 2010 I was living and working in London and the internet had changed communication in all sorts of ways. Dai, who lives in Australia, and I would exchange occasional volleys of emails. On one occasion I was nattering about both my grown up children working in hospitality at Plymouth Argyle. He responded by telling me his grandfather had played for Argyle for 10 years in the pre World War 2 era. My pondering of the team photo all those years ago had been correct. I did a little bit of research but didn’t find anything much about the talented player beyond what Dai already knew.
By the time I moved back to Plymouth the old city museum has been closed for a long time and the new museum was taking shape. It was only last week when I was working in the new museum that I remembered that strange coincidence.
Meanwhile Dai had misplaced photos of his grandfather. Once again the internet and chance/coincidence and serendipity took the old ponder and gave it some new life.
Whilst working in London I made a friend of another Welshman called Marc who had introduced me to a woman called Sarah that he had trained with. She is an ardent Plymouth Argyle supporter, not something you meet too often in the capital. Last week I contacted her and asked if she had any books about Argyle history. She didn’t but after a bit of research she came up with a really informative website.
https://www.greensonscreen.co.uk/
The picture I gleaned from the website and one of Dai, published recently in a Colchester newspaper show why this curious long time ponder happened.
Grandfather and grandson look pretty similar .
Pondering, it’s not a quick process every time.
Pandemic Pondering #267
Yesterday I said that dog walking could be repetitive. But today blogging is repetitive. Yesterday I was out early to catch the dawn and today was the same, strengthened by the knowledge that yesterday, dawn was about the only time the sun showed it’s face.
Forder Creek, at dawn. A wonderful place to walk at low tide.
True to form the sun rose and was briefly beautiful but soon the ghastly greige of a West Country winter set in. My morning was filled with delivering this month’s books to the Bookworms reading group. Lunchtime however brought a very bright surprise. I went for a dog walk with a friend in Victoria Park, Plymouth, followed by an impromptu visit to a wonderful interiors shop. But it was the exteriors that chased away the greige of the day.
It’s not only sunshine that chases away the greige.
Pandemic Pondering #266
Dog walking can be repetitive, particularly the walks closest to home or favourites. London Park walks became meditative but also made me really appreciate the subtle way the seasons shift and change. Walks in Cornwall have a bigger diversity even if they all start more or less in the same area. In 12 hours I have done the same dog walk twice. Into the town and then off for a run by the river. I wasn’t lacking in options for other walks but I needed to do other things in the same location and not everything was open at the same times.
Last night’s walk was brightened up by our local towns festive project. Winter Wanderland. Local people and businesses were encouraged to make illuminated window displays, using sillouettes to brighten up walking about town, in place of the usual Christmas Carol Festival
The was no worry about avoiding crowds. We didn’t meet anyone else doing any winter wandering. Ours is not a town that gets giddy with excitement at the best of times. The promise of illuminated windows did not tickle anyone’s giddygland in this Tier 1 destination, despite many of the windows being really good.
Less than twelve hours later , nature threw a visual sillouette party of its own.
Still no giddiness or excitement or even any other people , but definitely something good to look at on a dog walk.
Pandemic Pondering #265
The Theft of the Family Baubles
Yesterday saw the gathering of three friends for breakfast @theoldmortuary table. For those of you who have read the ‘about’ page of this blog will know the table is where many Ponderings start.
All three of us had rather sad tales involving the theft of our familial collections of Christmas decorations. I suspect it is unusual to have such sorry tales involving something as trivial as Christmas decorations but the triviality underlines the unkindness of people.
Memories for all three of us are triggered by Christmas decorations. As a collective group of women we have been robbed of Christmas decorations that we knew and loved as children. Between the three of us they represented memories from Woolworths, Hong Kong, Poland, Harrods and many unremembered locations and events , in age they possibly stretched back almost 100 years. The theft of them says so much about the character of the people who took them as their only true value is within the loving memories of family members. Sadly, they are likely to all be in landfill somewhere now, as detached from their memories they do become worthless tat.
I think, encouraged by this sad talk, we decided to mark 2020 with some new decorations. We were aiming for gaudy colours with maybe a hint of retro and perhaps a little bit tastelessness. These new additions illustrate this blog.
Several things revealed themselves to us.
Gaudy and tasteless is not a thing in 2020.
Woolworths has gone.
The first week of December is way too late to get peak choice in Christmas Bauble World.
Some stars look a little like a Covid-19 Virus.
And to those Bauble thieves in three different locations – we know where you live.
Pandemic Pondering #264
Winter walk at Siblyback lake. A regular walk for us but today the colours were spectacular. No filters were used on these photographs.
Days like this are so precious.
Pandemic Pondering #263
This is a picture of very happy artists. Only in 2020 could this be quite so exciting. Drawn to the Valley, Art Group have managed the almost impossible feat of arranging two exhibitions in the last two months.
Following on from the fabulously successful Butchers Hall Exhibition in Tavistock this happy group of artists set up the exhibition at Harbour House Kingsbridge this weekend.
Here is a sneak preview of the exhibition.
Looking like a great reason to visit Kingsbridge.
Pandemic Pondering #262
The essential blog of December. The day the decorations started going up.
Life and blogging doesn’t always go to plan and putting up the decorations was not on plan yesterday . Happy Sunday blog readers.
Pandemic Pondering #261
Pondering passages.
December and the run up to Christmas is a very appropriate time to fill in a huge gap in my local knowledge.
One of the bodies of water I regularly walk along used to be known as Crimble Passage. That’s just as exciting as working near Grotto Passage!
That’s it I’m done for the day.
Crimble has in time changed to Cremyl. The tides and currents of The Crimble or Cremyl are complex and dangerous and give the land around which they swirl the name Devils Point. Conversely the beach close by where @theoldmortuary swim safely is called Tranquility Bay.
Pandemic Pondering #260
My first day back at The Box after Lockdown 2, and my first day in a new- to-me gallery.
I could give you the official description of Port of Plymouth 1 but yesterday for an hour or so I had a unique experience. The gallery was almost empty and I had the chance to explore it unencumbered with any responsibility for the well being of visitors.
The portrait above is of an anonymous fisherman, he is the human face of the character of this gallery. The gallery yesterday represented to me the biography of the city. Port of Plymouth 1 tells the story, the basis almost, of every other gallery in the museum. The sort of thing that might be written on the back of a funeral service booklet to give an over view of the deceaseds life. Of course Plymouth has not died and under current circumstances enjoys relatively good health.
I deliberately chose a man’s photograph because the gallery has a woman’s voice. Dawn French narrates two audio visual presentations within Port 1 and while you are in the space you are never very far away from her voice. This is a brilliant piece of gender balance because inevitably Port 1 is for the most part a man’s world. Not because women played no part in the history of Plymouth but because history has traditionally sidelined women’s contribution. It is only really the 20 th Century exhibits that begin to truly reflect the importance of women to the city.
As you enter Port of Plymouth 1 there is a massive 3D screen showing a film presentation of the developmental history of Plymouth. The film is one of the exhibits narrated by Dawn French. Currently with Covid-19 restrictions only about twelve people can view it at any one time, with so few people it is hard to gauge the impact but later in my morning a whole school group of about 40 watched it together and the impact on them as a large group was remarkable, when the museum can open as normal this will be a memorable group activity.
@theoldmortuary we are in the process of moving home. It was a little bit strange to view our proposed new location as history evolved over it and in the WW2 era bombs landed very close.
Ambient Lighting in Port of Plymouth 1 is subdued but the lighting of each exhibit is so beautifully done that even when it is full of people ( a future aspiration) it is really easy to concentrate and understand the significance of each exhibit.
One historic artifact was simple but poignant.
The Falklands Conflict left a big mark on the recentish memory of Plymouth
This is the point that pondering has to stop, just like the Dockyard Gate photo above, the visitors started to arrive. There is loads more to talk about but visitor safety and smiling took over my time.
theoldmortuary.design 